Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther was eight years old when Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and landed in the Western Hemisphere. Luther was a young monk and priest when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome...

ELCA Good Gifts Catalog

Assignment Process

Assignment completes candidacy for all people, including those ordained in another Lutheran church or Christian tradition, moving them toward first call and admittance to the appropriate roster in the ELCA...

Joint Observance

The ELCA Conference of Bishops' Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Liaison Committee and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Committee commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by signing a joint statement during a Lutheran-Catholic service of Common Prayer.

Reformation 500

Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-Five Theses” in Wittenberg on Oct. 31, 1517, and the resulting debate about Christian teaching and practice led to changes that have shaped the course of Western Christianity for almost 500 years.

Review: Three Books on Peace

The Rev. Richard J. Niebanck

06/01/2005

[1] Must Christianity -defined as that theological ethos whose
normative basis is the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ
- be violent? This question, the title of the third book to
be reviewed below, is answered with a definite "yes" by the first
and emphatic "no" by the second.

[2] To be sure, the first book nowhere mentions Christianity by
name, much less engaging it on its own ground. It simply
assumes that "the Christian story," as inseparable from an
inherently violent worldview which celebrates domination by force,
must, for the sake of "enduring peace," be set aside and replaced
by other, non-violent "stories." "Enduring peace" requires
nothing short of the dismantling of "empire" in all its aspects
-social, political, and religious.

[3] The second book, on the other hand, gives a ringing "no:" to
the extent that Christians have been "violent" is not a function of
the gospel but rather of their misconstrual of it. This
author is convinced that an honest reading of the sources - in
particular the Sermon on the Mount - will lead to the development
of an effective theory and practice of peace.

[4] The third book is a collection of thirteen scholarly essays
which explore the question from a variety of angles, all of them
sharing a positive conviction about the relevance of the Christian
ethos to the quest for world peace.

[5] In a lecture he did not live to present, my friend and
colleague, Louis A. Smith, observed that "when we are dead to God,
religion is everywhere," and that postmodernity, if it is anything
at all, it is extremely religious. (Louis A. Smith, "God's Law,
God's Gospel, and Their Proper Distinction." Concordia
Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN, January 20, 2005.)
Sharon D. Welch's book, After Empire, is all about
religion.

[6] Never mind the fact that After Empire is published
by Fortress Press, an arm of a church body, the Evangelical Church
in America, whose constitution cites Holy Scripture as its "rule
and norm of faith and life," and the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran
confessions as true and authoritative witness to divine
revelation. Unlike other (most?)books of theological ethic,
After Empire contains no index of scriptural
citations. Nor do such topics as creation and redemption, sin
and grace, law and gospel appear. The name of Jesus is
nowhere to be found, to say nothing of apostles, church fathers or
reformers. While one might not be surprised by such a book
from a Unitarian, Campbellite, or Quaker publisher, its Lutheran
origin does leave one wondering.

[7] After Empire is very religious, "religion"
being defined as entirely an artifact of human culture.
"God," for Welch, is a signifier that fails to signify, a vestige
of belief-systems which were, and continue to be, inherently
violent and self-justifying. Welch does not make a frontal
assault on historic Christianity as such, but her rejection of the
"scandal of particularity" in the Gospel is unmistakable. In
place of "created in the image of God," Welch (quoting Stephen
Batcheler, p. 132) sees religion as the "the creation of ourself,"
a project that is "intersubjective," inherently social.
Religion is "an alchemy of desire," "the power to conjure…to
heal and to harm." (p. 24)

[8] Notwithstanding the fact that it is embedded in ancient
tradition, religion is, in Welch's view, malleable and can be put
to use in the advancement of such desirable ends as peace and
justice. She fervently believes that, through a creative
syncretism, it is humanly possible to construct (in the words of
the book's subtitle) an "ethos of enduring peace." Her
proposal is summed up in the form of an invitation: "Let us
begin to work together creating the ceremonies and telling the
stories [read 'metanarratives'] that will allow us to
participate in the framing of a more just and equitable social
order." (p.104)

[9] That the words, "more just" evoke the question, "As compared
to what standard?," does not appear to daunt the author who, being
a thoroughgoing postmodern, does not abide absolutes of any kind -
except the absolute assertion that there are no absolutes.
She goes so far as to eschew the assertion of a deconstructionist
anti-ideology and claims not to engage in polemics with "other
postmodern thinkers [who] are still implicated in logics of
oppression…" (p. 16) Instead she embraces flux and
indeterminacy - and a stance of utter openness: "There is
nothing that inevitably grounds our desire for justice.
Justice, in all its forms, is our work, our creation, our
unfinished task." (p 18) One cannot help saying that if this
is the ultimate state of things, Thrasymachus - and Thomas Hobbes -
are right: justice is the interest of the more powerful, and
that is just what the post moderns assert.

[10] In this connection David Bentley Hart is right on target in
his characterization of Michael Foucault (whom Welch quotes often):
"[T]he course of history comprises merely a concatenation of
dominations […] And by power Foucault means a ubiquitous,
multiform […] energy of conquest […] Thus […]
the 'truth' of any culture or discipline is primarily a style of
constraint […] cultural knowledge is not simply the source,
but the effect of power." (The Beauty of the
Infinite, Eerdmans, 2004, p. 68)

[11] Hart concludes: "A theologian might well be tempted
to read Foucault as an unwitting phenomenologist of original sin."
(Ibid.) For her part, Welch cannot do this as "sin"
seems not to be a part of her working vocabulary. She appears
to be saying that we just have to keep trying to overcome
"dualities," "we-you" antinomies, "polarizing divides," and meld
into one the best of the world's multiform cultures - especially
Native American, Afro Americans, African and Buddhist - while
always being on guard against the possibility of the religious
sanctioning of violence and imperial domination. (p. 179)

[12] Welch's answer to the human condition seems to be "ecstasy"
and "creativity" - more and more of it. Yet, she
observes:

It is disconcerting to
acknowledge that our ecstasy in connection, whether political or
conceptual, is simply the energy of connection, an energy that may
be used in amoral, immoral, or moral ways. (p.
19)

To which this
undeconstructed Lutheran replies: "Of course it's
disconcerting. It's our human condition: sinful
finitude. We're not gonna get out of it alive except by dying
and rising again in Jesus Christ our crucified and risen
Lord.

[14] In the "mean meantime" we fight the same battles over and
over again, whether against the Old Adam within or the
principalities and powers without. There is no "enduring
peace" this side of the eschaton between and among sinners who, by
external threat or self-regarding prudence, are more or less
civilized. Ask any policeman, any politician, any judge, any
soldier.

[15] Yet God does not forsake us but is ever-present in his
two-fold rule as Creator and Savior to support, comfort, and guide
until the Day of Christ's blessed appearing.

[16] Glen Stassen may be described as a chastened
enthusiast. On the one hand he is convinced that the precepts
of the Sermon on the Mount are directly applicable to political
problems. On the other hand, he describes himself as "rooted
in the Christian realism of my teacher, Reinhold Niebuhr." (p. 14)
An admirer of "the Anabaptists and Quakers of the sixteenth century
[who] recovered and developed the peace-church tradition" (p. 37),
Stassen nevertheless places himself somewhere between pacifism and
just war theory, advocating "a theology of the restraint of war -
either pacifism or just war theory. (p. 231, author's
emphasis) Sharply critical of the pretensions of governments and
politicians, he confesses: "I must admit my own captivity and
not merely my government's; I must point to the processes of grace
in which we can participate and not merely diagnose error, and I
must do it realistically." (p. 249) A man with a mission, Stassen
is dedicated to the development of a theory and practice of
peacemaking that can make significant changes in the age-old habits
of nations, contributing to a political culture of global
peace. Yet he readily admits: "I have not done my part
clearly and effectively enough." (Ibid)

[17] Written in a popular style, Just Peacemaking is
intended both to inspire and to guide "church and peacemaker groups
to nourish independent Christian ethics, to help us guard against a
jingoistic and self-righteous nationalism."(p. 252f) Each chapter
concludes with "Questions for thought" intended to spark group
discussion. Echoing Martin Luther King, Jr., Stassen
exclaims, "I have a dream of thousands of such groups blossoming in
churches, leading us toward our own 'turning' toward just
peacemaking." (p. 153) I, a slightly older contemporary of Stassen,
am reminded of a similar effort launched by the Quakers in the
early 1960s called "Turn Toward Peace."

[18] Just Peacemaking begins with a recounting of the
euphoria and boundless hope that swept through Germany both East
and West following the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
Stassen, who was present in Germany at the time, has been deeply
influenced by the generation of Germans who reacted against the
passivity of most, and collaboration of many German Christians
during the Nazi period. He characterizes (caricatures?) the
Lutheran ethos as saying in effect that "the Sermon on the Mount
was for the inner, individual self and its motives, not for
societal relationships, politics, or economics." (p.34) He
argues that "[t]he Sermon the Mount, as well as all of Jesus'
ministry, seeks not to give people a guilt trip but to deliver them
from the vicious cycles that cause our bondage to guilt, hostility,
and injustice." (p. 249) He asserts that in post-Nazi,
post-Communist Germany, "Faced with the reality of the force of
evil in the world and with the need for a realistic politics that
could turn the politics of arms buildup around, it became clear
that the Sermon on the Mount was politically relevant." (p.36) One
will perhaps excuse this incredulous reviewer's adding the words,
"clear, that is, to some."

[19] For all his meticulous attention to exegesis, both of the
teachings of Jesus and of Paul, Stassen's reading of the New
Testament amounts to a flat moralism which declares these teachings
to be "transformative" in and of themselves. One need only
grasp - or be grasped by -- these parenetic exhortations in order
to break the deadlock of clashing power and interest. This
applies equally to the interpersonal and international
spheres. Stassen's prescription, in addition to New Testament
perenesis, contains a significant admixture of game theory,
communication theory, transactional analysis ("I'm o.k., you're
o.k."), and plain common sense, all of which can be quite useful,
but none of which is redemptive or "transformative."

[20] It needs to be pointed out that Paul's description of the
"new life in Christ" is predicated on the Christian's having died
and been raised by baptism into Christ. (Romans 6:1-11)
Lacking such death to sin and resurrection to eternal life, Paul's
exhortations remain the law that works wrath and
self-righteousness.

[21] On the other hand, the exhortations of Jesus and Paul do
have, along with the moral insights of the Torah, Wisdom, and the
natural law, a civilizing function in the non-redemptive sphere of
God's secularity. For instance, Paul's exhortation in Romans
12:20 to feed and clothe one's enemy, verbatim from Proverbs
25:21f, and Jesus' exhortation not to seek vengeance (compare
Proverbs 20:22 and 24:29), while not redemptive in themselves, are
good advice, accessible to any human being, and contributory to
inter-personal harmony and civil peace. They do not kill the
Old Adam in us, but they can restrain our murderous impulse, saving
us from the "vicious cycle" (Stassen's term) of violence in this
fallen world. It is into this context that the Christian is
tossed again daily to serve the neighbor in love.

[22] Stassen celebrates the involvement of Christians - and his
own involvement in particular - in the successful elimination of
intermediate range missiles in Europe. He sees the experience
as evidence that Christians can "make a difference" in matters
political. One can only agree, they can and do make a
difference, both for good and for ill. One prays constantly
that they may, by God's grace, be the salt, the leaven, and the
light of which Jesus spoke. What they dare not do is claim
credit for themselves or think that their efforts are anything more
than mere blips in history.

[23] It is to be noted that the Christian activism that Stassen
celebrates in the 1981-82 Freeze campaign became the occasion of
one of the most bitterly divisive convention debates in the short
history of the Lutheran Church in America. The sad episode
recounted by Christa Klein (Politics and Policy, Fortress,
1989, pp. 161-169), is what happens when otherwise conscientious
Christians of one political persuasion engage in political action
not to secure change in national policy but in order to foist their
opinion on their church body. The LCA never recovered from
the experience which poisoned the wells of discourse for years to
come. It was misdirected Christian activism at its very
worst.

[24] Just Peacemaking contains a chapter on the 1991
war in Iraq which, though overtaken by events, continues to have a
certain value as grist for discussions which, please God, may be
civil and constructive.

[25] Richard John Neuhaus (FIRST THINGS, May 2005) recently
identified Glen Stassen as a "key player" in an initiative by the
group, Res Publica, to develop a "consensus statement" on abortion.
It is thought by some that the outcome of this project will provide
the abortion plank for Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign.

[26] The title of this volume of essays is, to say the least,
provocative if not downright loaded. It gets one thinking
about such questions as: What is Christianity? What is
violence? How is violence distinguished from legitimate
force? From power? What has Christianity to do with any
of these? And so on ad infinitum.

[27] While each author has been left free to answer the
question, "Must Christianity Be Violent?" in his or her own way,
there does seem to be a minimal consensus as to what Christianity
is: a theological ethos and religious culture grounded
normatively in the good news of salvation through Jesus
Christ. Whatever a particular author's perspective, be it
historical, theological/confessional, or practical, all the authors
are agreed that Christianity has to do with the salvation of a
sinful world in which violence is rampant. All are agreed
that, as sinners, Christians are inescapably involved in violence
if not actively then at least passively by virtue of their
solidarity with fallen humanity. All the authors are agreed
that Christians are bound to give some sort of accounting for that
involvement.

[28] This book is based on a conference at Wheaton College in
March of 2000. It should therefore be no surprise that, in
the words of co-editor Kenneth R. Chase, "[t]he leading theological
emphasis of the volume is evangelical." (p.13) Chase does not
detail what the term, "evangelical," means, apparently assuming
that American readers will understand it in its American Free
church sense. Chase notes that, be they pacifist or
non-pacifist, all the theological essayists share "a commitment to
Christian uniqueness and absoluteness." (p.16) The volume is
dedicated to the proposition that Christianity has its own special
contribution to make to the public weal, both national and global,
as signified by the expression, "Christian peace." (pp. 9, 207
ff)

[29] The book's first section, "Histories," contains five essays
of exceptionally high quality which portray the mixed record of
Christians during various historical periods: The First
Crusade, the Spanish conquests, the American anti-slavery struggle,
and (two essays) the Nazi Holocaust. Carefully documented and
even-handed, each essay sets forth the part Christians and the
church have played, both positive and negative, amid the ironies
and ambiguities that comprise what we call "history," neither
demonizing nor romanticizing.

[30] Joseph Lynch portrays the First Crusade with ample
quotations from the writings of eye-witnesses. He reminds us
that the church of the ninth through the eleventh centuries served
as a surrogate civil authority at a time when "crude, brutal, and
illiterate" warlords preyed upon the general populace. Amid
such anarchy, the church became a (perhaps the only) agent
in combating a culture of violence through such institutions as the
Peace of God and the Truce of God.

[31] Luis N. Rivera-Pagan reminds that the Spanish
Conquista in the New World began just as the Reconquista
of Iberia was concluding. These two expressions of idolatrous
national glory and the violent distortion of the Great Commission
of our Lord together, historians agree, brought about the eventual
downfall of a once-flourishing society, economy, and culture.
Rivera-Pagan describes the pre-Reconquista thus:

Christian Hispanic, Muslim
Andalus and Jewish Sapharad for a time at least were able to forge
a community of multicultural conviviencia. It was fragile and
vulnerable but it was a historical reality. The [Catholic
Monarchs] put an end to it. The Cross crushed the Crescent
and expelled the Star of David. (p. 42)

[32] In depicting the unspeakable carnage and plunder of the
Conquistadores, Rivera-Pagan does not neglect to describe
the heroic protest of such religiosi as the
Dominican Bartolome de las Casas, author of La Historia de las
Indias and a proto-theologian of liberation in the true
sense. His ringing words against injustice resound
today: "Bread is life to the destitute, and to deprive them
of it is murder." (p.49)

[33] Dan McKanan's essay, "Is God Violent? Theological
Options in the Anti-Slavery Movement" is a riveting,
carefully-documented account of the point-counterpoint interplay of
theological themes as illustrated in the writings of Frederick
Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, and
Abraham Lincoln: Providence versus free will, tender
persuasion versus violent struggle. The question of theodicy,
"Where is God?," runs throughout these, as does the question of
Christian duty: whether to endure injustice and suffering as
God's will or, to resist, and if to resist, to do so non-violently
or violently. These questions burned in the consciousness of
the entire nation throughout the Civil War. The moral agony is
captured by the words of the Christian pacifist David Low
Dodge: "[W]ar is a judgment of God's providence" and it is "a
sin of the highest magnitude." (p. 53) One is reminded of Luther's
assertion that God uses sin to punish sin.

[34] The great divide within American Christianity - Protestant
Christianity, as Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism had not as yet
significantly entered the public arena - was between old-line
Calvinism and Arminian revivalism. The former emphasizing
divine transcendence and providential ordering of the world, the
latter, human free will, conversion, and righteous action in both
the private (as in temperance) and the public (as in abolitionism)
spheres. It is not difficult to see how, in the struggle to
end slavery, Arminian piety predominated.

[35] Yet, among Arminians there was a profound ambivalence
between reliance on the sweet reason and non-resistance of Jesus
and the embrace of apocalyptic violence for the sake of justice,
the first personified by Stowe's character, little Eva, the second
by such figures as the fiery preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, who
assisted in running guns - "Beecher Bibles" they were called - to
freesoilers in "Bleeding Kansas." (See Paul Johnson, A
History of the American People, p. 429.) These two themes lie
side by side in the final stanza of the "Battle Hymn of the
Republic:"

In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on

The sweetness of Jesus is trumped by the bloody struggle for
freedom in which the soldier's death becomes a kind of atoning
sacrifice.

[36] Lincoln's political theology was of another kind
altogether, embodying humility before the inscrutable workings of
Providence while actively performing his office. Tentative
regarding the divine purpose but confident in divine governance,
Lincoln pledged: "I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be
an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this, his
almost chosen people." (p. 66) The struggle was a scourge to be
endured, not an apocalyptic, holy war that would usher in the
Kingdom of God. Luther would have approved of this unchurched
son of Baptist parents: Lincoln sensed that God performs his
mysterious will through masks "that often seemed to contradict
it."

[37] There is much else in this book worth pondering although
more than can be dealt with here. For me, the essay on the
anti-slavery struggle could well stand alone just because its
themes still play their point-counterpoint in American political
culture even in this age that is labeled "secularist" and
"post-modern."

[38] The several essays in the "Histories" section are, in my
view, examples of historiography at its very best: even-handed,
sympathetic to the human condition, marking ambiguities and ironies
and, above all, eschewing the temptation to demonize and
romanticize. While not hiding their values under a bushel,
the authors do not grind an ideological axe or push a political
program.

[39] This brings one to the essay by James C. Juhnke, "How
Should We Then Teach American History," which, in my reading, does
push a program, namely "nonviolent peacemaking." Juhnke is
altogether forthright: "[W]e do not accept the autonomy of
the secular disciplines, but attempt to apply Christian values to
our scholarship and teaching." (p. 107) He declares:
"Nationalist patriotism still owns the public square" where both
"triumphalists" and "radical critics" affirm "the myth of
redemptive violence." (p. 108) In the margin I wrote, "Oh?"

[40] However odious crass nationalism and redemptive violence
are, I do not see them, in this age of therapeutic political
correctness, dominating either the "public square" or the public
schools. What I fear is that Juhnke, having set up an over
simplistic diagnosis, is proposing an equally over simplistic
remedy: the substitution of one ideology for another.
As a friend of mine likes to say, "The thesis lives on in the
antithesis."

[41] Lest I be misunderstood, let me quickly add that I do not
subscribe to the notion of a purely objective historiography based
upon "pure facts." I do not wish to revive the fallacious
"fact-value's split." Humility before the fact is indeed a
virtue to be practiced by the historian, but one must also practice
humility before the "fact" that no fact stands separate from its
interpretation. It is this realization that renders
historiography the intriguing enterprise that it is, a project that
goes on and on, endlessly reconsidering and correcting itself.

[42] If all Juhnke were saying is that certain themes that have
been lacking in the teaching of history need to be restored, I
would concur at once. However, he is calling for something
far more comprehensive: the construction of a "master
narrative" the controlling motif of which is not only "Christian,"
but a particular kind of sectarian; ideological Christian
pacifism. Such a proposal, I submit, confuses history
and catechesis. Each has its legitimate role, but honesty
requires them to be kept separate. But then I reveal my
Lutheran bias: salvation history and world history, though
related, are not identical. As for the construction of
"master narratives," that is a game at which any number can
play.

[43] Limitations of both space and time now necessitate my
drawing this review to a close. There is much else on which I
might comment, notably the essays by Richard Mouw, Stanley
Hauerwas, and John Milbank, as well as the theological "tennis
match" between the latter two. However, to do that adequately
would require another full-length article.

[44] I will limit myself to a few closing comments on a matter
of fundamental concern, taking as my point of departure the essay
by Mark A. Noll which concludes the "Histories" section:
"Have Christians Done More Harm than Good?"

[45] I submit that one of our besetting temptations as
Christians is the temptation to triumphalism, to what Luther would
call a "theology of glory." Further, as one whose early
Christian nurture was in a Free church evangelical (Max Weber would
call it a sectarian) environment, I submit that triumphalism is a
particularly besetting sin for evangelicals. It was in a
Methodist, not a Lutheran, Sunday school that I learned to sing
"Onward Christian Soldiers," and it was as a college student that I
became acquainted with the Student Volunteer Movement and its
motto, "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation."
Today I see such triumphalism in the Church Growth ideology in
which one grows a church as one might grow a business.
Finally, I see it in a social activism which is dedicated to the
transformation of this world according to a Biblical blueprint.

[46] The title of Mark Noll's essay, "Have Christians Done More
Harm Than Good?," points to the downside of evangelical Christian
triumphalism: an abiding anxiety over whether we've "gotten
it right" or "given of our selves enough." It's the kind of
anxiety that too often leads to defensiveness on the one hand and
self-flagellation on the other. In the face of the world's
criticism we at times frantically recite all the good that
Christians have done only to realize utter futility of such an
effort. In our shame, we welcome the world's taunts as might
sinners the cleansing fires of Purgatory.

[47] What Noll does is demonstrate the futility of
triumphalism. Not only is it impossible to "keep score," such
score-keeping is beside the point. Noll says it well:
the Christian gospel proclaims

That Jesus Christ, the
second person of the Trinity, entered into the human story that he
had authored in order to save sinners. [..H]umans are redeemed by
God's grace rather than by the achievement of their own perfection.
[…S]alvation offered by God to sinners through Jesus Christ
is a gift that we do not deserve; it is not a reward that we can
earn. This means that Christianity is a religion of redeemed
sinners […] the cross […] calls unbelievers to heed
God's act of mercy on their behalf and reminds believers of their
constant need to repent of their sin. (.p. 92)

[49] Such is the gracious Word that liberates us from sin and
guilt, the Word to which we return ever and again throughout our
earthly pilgrimage, forgiving, freeing, and empowering us to serve
the neighbor in this fallen world which God providently governs
through "masks" of wrath and grace until the Day of Christ's return
in glory.

This is Christ's church.

There is a place for you here.

We are the church that shares a living, daring confidence in God's grace. Liberated by our faith, we embrace you as a whole person--questions, complexities and all. Join us as we do God's work in Christ's name for the life of the world.